


Stitches

by rayzel



Category: Parks and Recreation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayzel/pseuds/rayzel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron and Leslie are both injured after an inspection of the Pit turns hazardous.  Having been taken to the hospital by Ann, they receive care and are discharged.  Ron, however, needs daily bandage changes to the particularly embarrassing area of his unfortunate cut and Leslie must be the one to do it, lest she risk Ron falling under the influence of his ex-wife, Tammy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [preromantics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/gifts).



“See, Ron?” Leslie asked her boss, arms outstretched over the pit. “Don’t look at the exposed pipe lines, or sheets of sharp metal, or the heaps of garbage collecting in the bottom. Look at the potential of all those things. Hidden in all that pipe and garbage is a great park. I just know it.”

Ron looked over the pit with exasperation. “Leslie, I know it could be a great park. And I’ve already given the go-ahead. So why am I here? It’s five o’clock and you promised me a rib-eye.”

Leslie was used to Ron’s impatience when it came to the everyday minutiae of running the Parks Department, but she was facing some bureaucratic tape in transforming the pit into the park of her career, and needed Ron Swanson’s legendary icy stare beside her in those meetings. So she had brought him here in the hopes of strengthening his support. With the promise of meat.

“Well, it’s a work in progress. And we have to make sure that progress...progresses, and I really need your help here, Ron. If you could just join me in the meeting tomorrow with Councilman Jacobs, I would be happy to do the budget reports for a month,” Leslie pleaded. Ron fixed her with a stare. “I mean, I already do them, but, I would do them for a month in silence, I promise.”

“In silence? Ron furrowed his eyebrows, clearly irritated in his hunger. “No annoying jingles about expense figures? No spontaneous dance breaks to those jingles?” 

“None. Please, please please? Please, Ron? Please Ron? Please Ron? Plea-”

“Fine, woman!” Ron half-yelled. “Now. Steak.”

Leslie beamed. “Thank you, Ron.” Then somewhat under her breath, she said, “It’s just, you know he’s going to use his famous glass eye to unnerve me and-”

But before Leslie could finish her thought, the ground underneath them shifted and swayed and crumbled, sending them spiraling down the ten feet to the bottom of the pit. Ron bounced off the side of the dune a few times on his way down. Leslie shrieked and fell straight down in a swan dive. They both landed in a pile of pizza boxes and rotting vegetables. 

"LESLIE!" Ron groaned in equal parts agony and extreme exasperation. 

“Oh man.” She pulled a banana peel off her forehead. “Are you okay, Ron?” She tried to get up and stand on her feet. “Ow. Ow.” “Okay,” she said to herself, “that’s not happening.” 

“Okay, I’m going to call Ann. It’s Friday evening, she’s probably at home.” Leslie pulled her cell phone from her pocket, grateful it stayed with her on the way down. It rang twice before Ann answered. 

“Leslie? Hey, how are-”

Leslie didn’t wait to explain. “Hi Ann, um, we’ve fallen in the pit behind your house and we can’t get up and can you come help us please okay goodbye.” 

*** 

After a day spent under observation at Pawnee General, doctors determined that Leslie was fine. Ron, on the other hand, had suffered a lengthy laceration on his left buttock and a severe blow to his dignity. It was one thing to bounce like a ball to the bottom of a dirt pit, quite another to have all of your colleagues know about your butt stitches. At least they were all too afraid of him to snicker in his presence. Leslie had to force herself to think of Eagleton to keep from smiling though when the nurse walked in with the needle. Now the doctors were ready to release both Leslie and Ron, under the condition that Ron have someone change his bandage daily and see to his medication while enduring a week’s worth of bed rest. But finding a willing party proved to be a problem.

“Is there anyone who can look after you while you’re healing?” asked the ancient doctor, while flipping through the papers of Ron’s medical chart. “There’s an ex-wife listed here...” he trailed off.

Ron was somewhat loopy from pain medication. “Tammy,” he slurred with a drowsy smile on his face. 

While Ron had made it known that no one, under direct orders as the Director of the department, was to even talk about his stitches, let alone sneak glances at them in horrified fascination (Andy still couldn’t eat), Leslie knew the consequences of letting Tammy Two anywhere near Ron. She knew what she had to do.

“I - I’ll do it,” she stuttered. Taking a deep breath, she suppressed her trepidation and said, “I’ll change his bandage and look after him.” 

Donna and Tom stared at her in astonishment.

“Great!” the doctor said with a clip. He quickly flipped Ron’s chart closed and told them he would start the paperwork. And within an hour, they were on their way.

 ***

“Well, Ron, since you’ve never actually told me where you live, I’m just going to drive to your cabin in the woods. I think it has running water. It does, right? Ron?” She sighed when she saw the drool running down his sleepy face. “Oh man, at least JJ’s Diner isn’t too far.”

Andy rode with them and helped Leslie carry Ron inside. “Unf,” he made a low, short guttural sound when hefting Ron onto his shoulder. “Oh my god, Leslie, Ron weighs a ton! What does he eat? Humvees?” He not so gently wobbled into the bedroom where Leslie hastily turned down the one plaid sheet on the pallet Ron used as a bed. After five frightful minutes of balancing Ron between Andy’s shoulder and Leslie’s head and arms, they eventually dropped him onto the pallet.

“Jeez, I think he needs to cut back on the bacon,” Andy said finally. They turned him onto his side to keep his stitches in the air and went in search of supplies. 

“Hey, Leslie! Look what I found!” Andy held up a taxidermied squirrel. “It’s so cute! Look at its little eyes and little hands. I just want to hold him,” he said with a giggle while rubbing his cheek on the squirrel’s fur. 

“That’s great, Andy,” Leslie said with a bemused smile. “Okay, so you can help me with the two o’clock shifts this week, right? I think out of the two of us, he’d rather have you give him a hospital shower. It’s just, I’m a woman, and his deputy director, and changing the bandage on his bottom is going to be startling enough.”

“Hehe,” laughed Andy. “Butt bandage.”

*** 

For every day of the following week, Leslie would leave Ron’s prescribed dosage of pain medication on the only table inside the cabin, with a note explaining that the home health nurse would be in to change his bandage the next day. The nurse, however, only came every two days, leaving Leslie with a couple of days of bandage duty to fulfill. In order to change it without his knowledge, she timed her visits to the cabin to coincide with the drowsiness expected from his pain medication. While he was sleeping, she put on sunglasses and changed the bandage, doing her best to only use her peripheral vision. She also supplemented the contents of his fridge and took out the trash. She was so successful in her subterfuge that Ron never suspected anyone other than Helga, the stocky, German home health nurse assigned to him, ever stopped by.

Eventually, he was well enough to return to work. When he walked, er, hobbled, into the department on his first day back, everyone stopped what they were doing and held their breath. Ron met no one’s eyes, though, and went straight to his office where he hovered over his chair for a minute, slowly fitting himself into the seat like an old man. 

“Oof,” he grunted when his bottom finally made contact with the chair. “Hurts like a mofo,” he said under his breath. After a few seconds, he turned to his right and bellowed, “Leslie!”

She got up from her desk and made the slowest walk of her life to his office. Did he know she had occasionally removed his bandage? Did he somehow remember the shriek she let loose upon first seeing his butt cheek? She had honestly never known any human butt could ever be that hairy. Did he know she knew? She was almost too scared to find out.

“Hey, boss,” she said with a smile that belied her fear. “Good to have you back. Feeling any better?”

“Leslie,” he stated flatly. “That delightful brute of a woman called Helga told me you checked in on me during my convalescence at the cabin. And that you were the one who brought me those ribs and t-bones.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. “Thank you for that.” 

“Aww, no problem, boss. It was the least I could do after, you know, dragging you out to the pit where we fell ten feet into a pile of garbage and-”

“A 22-ounce porterhouse,” he said, interrupting her. 

Leslie was confused for a moment, then smiled. The guilt of their hospitalization had been gnawing at her. And she knew he could tell. She was still going to fulfill her promise of doing the budget reports in silence for a month, whether or not he accompanied her to departmental meetings concerning the future park, but didn’t yet know exactly how to make it all up to him. 

She should have known meat was the obvious choice.

“Sure thing, Ron.” She smiled and turned back to her office, feeling a little bit taller and walking at her typical, fast clip.


End file.
